Atlantic link scored the highest in the shoot-out. Of course, they were more looking at PPT conversion tools. Still, it's a resource worth looking at. It's also interesting to see the resulting applications. Some of them I could not get to run - which is always a bit scary. As far as Atlantic Link, I believe that the eLearningGuild survey treated them as a Software Simulation Tool and that's part of the reason they didn't appear when I created the graphic above (2007). They also didn't have many users at the time. I'm always somewhat skeptical of niche tools (see eLearning Course Development).

In June 2007, I added a few more rapid eLearning tools. I also updated the graphic that shows eLearning Tool Satisfaction at the bottom of the page - see also - Course Authoring and Rapid eLearning Tool Satisfaction blog post. This list includes a host of additional tools that eLearning Guild members consider rapid eLearning development tools including Apple Keynote, Microsoft Word, Trivantis Lectora, Respondus StudyMate, Brainshark Presentations, Vuepoint Content Creator, WebEx Presentation Studio, KnowledgePlanet Firefly, Xstream RapidBuilder, ReadyGo Web Course Builder, BrainVisa RapideL, OnDemand Presenter, Desire2Learn Learning Environment, Corel Wordperfect Office, SkillSoft Course Customization, Toolbook Instructor, Learn.com LearnCenter, IBM Simulation Producer, Toolbook Assistant, and Cornerstone OnDemand. Many of these eLearning tools realistically are quite different than what I would consider to be the norm in Rapid eLearning Development tools.

Based on a couple of recent posts about Rapid eLearning and Rapid eLearning Tools (What is Rapid eLearning? & Rapid eLearning - More Definition), I was asked for recommendations on Rapid eLearning Tools. We've used several different eLearning tools and so I'm hesitant to say which is best, but thought it would be worth providing a list of eLearning tools. Most of these fit into the PowerPoint + Audio and most convert to Flash for delivery.

I've also added a couple of links at the bottom to other sources on eLearning Tools that might be helpful.

27 comments:

A note about Open Office - you can import a powerpoint presentation, or create your own presentation, and then export the file as a Flash file with just one click. Pretty seamless and it's free. Open Office also converts any file (document, spreadsheet, presentation, drawing) to PDF in case you want to create online handouts.

Before coming over to Articulate full time, I was a consultant. I write the core Flash/SWF routines behind PowerConverter. Just from a company philosophy standpoint, Articulate Presenter is designed from the ground up to be a tool for eLearning. PowerConverter is a presentation conversion tool. Although both do convert Powerpoint presentations, this philosophy difference has a major impact on how the tools work and what they provide. Personally, I think it's important to make the distinction between tools that can be used for eLearning and tools that are designed to be used for eLearning.

Jesse thanks for the heads up on Breeze vs. Connect. And I agree it will be interesting to see how Adobe handles the various products. Just putting it under Acrobat family suggests something.

On PowerConverter vs. Articulate Presenter your comment doesn't actually help differentiate what will be different using the tool. I've not use PowerConverter, but I'm assuming it wouldn't have capability to wrap with SCORM. Anything else that differentiates a presentation tool from an eLearning tool.

Also, I hope you noticed the irony of naming "Presenter" given that you are saying - hey this isn't a presenter. Also, a bunch of these tools are called Presenter or something close which is annoying because we have to use your company name with each reference to the product. But now I'm just taking easy shots at a good tool. :)

Yeah, I agree the names can be confusing. A lot of people seem to refer to Articulate Presenter as "Articulate," not Presenter. I guess this is reasonable, since until Quizmaker, Articulate only had Presenter (some cool new tools are also on the horizon).

In any case, back to the whole "designed for eLearning" topic. Presenter is designed to support eLearning from the start, so there are a lot of things like SCORM, AICC, learning games, the ability to embed Quizmaker quizes, etc. that you won't see in a tool like PowerConverter, because the company behind the product is really in the dark when it comes to the eLearning industry. On the other hand, if all you want to do is convert a Presentation, PowerConverter does a few things that Articulate Presenter doesn't do (for instance, slide transitions). The difference is that Articulate spends it's dev money on making the tool a better eLearning tool, while another company might spend its dev money on trying to support more PowerPoint features. The end result is that you see Articulate Presenter is winning the eLearning awards, not the other guys (I don't mean to sound arrogant there, just to state the end result). While part of this might be due to the fact that we have one of the world's best experts on the PowerPoint side of the equation (the PowerPoint object model is insanely complex and buggy), a much bigger part of the reason, IMO, is that if we have to choose between spending X dollars to implement some random animation, or the same money implementing a feature that makes the tool a better eLearning tool, we will probably opt for #2, while someone else might not do the same.

While at first glance the suggestion that one is designed for eLearning while another just can be used for eLearning might seem like a small difference, since both tools take PowerPoint and output Flash, it actually ends up making a huge difference in how much support the tool is going to give you to accomplish what you are trying to accomplish. Your end goal is teaching, not converting PowerPoints :).

Raptivity a rapid-elearning tool helps you create instructionally sound customizable interactivitiesThese interactions, once created, can then be integrated with various course creation tools or presentation tools or web design tools and many more. Raptivity is an interactivity builder which helps in the creation of interactivities. The Raptivity library of 175+ rapidly customizable interactions is content independent and these interactions can be used in various learning situations. visit www.raptivity.com for more information

In rapid elearning area,there is also some semi-rapid elearning tools should be concerned.such as the converting tools "PPT2DVD",which tool can easily convert powerpoint to DVD to make presentation everywhere.PPT TO DVD can connect online and reality learning.

This is a complete RAD SCORM e-learning development tool from the business focussed Open Source Open Elms project.

I think it's great - but then again we did help with it's development.

See a SCORM course which explains how the free software works written in the tool itself. This is definitely e-learning and not e-reading. http://www.openelms.org/lms/ecourses/e-learning%20in%2010%20minutes/defaults/pages/module.htm?mod=0

You should not forget myUdutu www.udutu.com. This is a free web application that easily lets you create powerful branching scenarios and very interactive courses from any kind of media, and when it converts a powerpoint it not only builds you a library of the content objects, but makes each slide an individual screen instead of a flash movie, so they can be modified, interactivity added, etc.

You admit that your link to the Brandon Hall PowerPoint shootout is a little out of date (2004). If you linked to the 2007 pages you would find that Content Point was the only product to win awards in 2 categories - a Gold in the PowerPoint to e-learning shootout and a Silver in the Software Simulation category.

You mentioned that there weren't many Atlantic Link users. I'd like to point out that that was only State-Side but in the UK and Europe there are many. I'd also like to mention that AL only opened up in the States in June of '07, of which since have taken on customers such as RBC, Ciba Vision, Alcon Labs, University of Oklahoma, Borland and many other blue chip companies, so our user base is growing quite rapidly here. Large organizations with multiple developers scattered across a broad geographic area is hardly a "nich".

There is one more name to your list of Rapid elearning devlopement tools i.e. Turbomeeting from www.rhubcom.com . It provides a secured on-promise web conferencing with multi-functions including interactive meetings, seminars, remote support and remote access - an ideal platform for elearning.

Hi jesseThanks for your notes!I just wanted to know one thing. Whether articulate helps me to customize the graphics?I usually develop e learning courses for training sessions for different firms. And so the look and feel would usually be different. At the same time, it contains lot of animations and button actions also.. Do Articulate helps to create such kind of courses?

I have a lot of examples on The Rapid E-Learning Blog that show different ways you can use the Articulate product. Here's a link to the blog archives to quickly scan previous posts. In addition, we did an Articulate 101 series in February that covered a lot of uses for the tools. There are a lot of really good examples in there.

Feel free to contact Gabe via the Word of Mouth blog if you have more specific Articulate questions.

Thanks, good information on rapid e-learning tools Who ever controls technology, controls world.Roman emperors ruled the world because they built roads.Britisher’s ------ built shipsRussians ------ built spaceshipsAmericans invented Atom bombs and Americans stills rules the world with Information technology.

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Rapid e-learning is the default choice for learning professionals in the current economic climate. The multi-hour courses are becoming 20 minutes messages, collaborative development tools are increasing in popularity and delivery times are being squeezed.I am the best example I get the knowledge of my subjects from videos rather than spending long hours in reading books.

Articulate is really a good rapid elearning tool. Wondershare Rapid E-Learning suite could help you create highly interactive learning content without the need of complicated programming knowledge. Reduce your development time and cost!

After 3 months of trying to work with Adobe Presenter, I am giving up. I have had nothing but problems with Adobe and Clarix (VAR). In all my years of working with software, I have never had a product that was more destructive. There must have been serious compatibility issues when they converted from Breeze because this product is worse than any computer virus I've ever even heard of.

I'm not completely independant since I work for a company called Sana Software. But we create solutions that can be used by both (non-technical) subject matter experts and professional course developers in one environment. This web based system, called Sana EasyGenerator, allows authors from all over the world to work together on creating courses, share and re-use media, apply master pages for a centralised look and feel, integrate flashes (including scorm integration) and much more. All this can be published to HTML for use on websites or to SCORM for use in any SCORM compliant learning management system (LMS).

About Me

Dr. Tony Karrer works as a part-time CTO for startups and midsize software companies - helping them get product out the door and turn around technology issues. He is considered one of the top technologists in eLearning and is known for working with numerous startups including being the original CTO for eHarmony for its first four years. Dr. Karrer taught Computer Science for eleven years. He has also worked on projects for many Fortune 500 companies including Credit
Suisse, Royal Bank of Canada, Citibank, Lexus, Microsoft, Nissan,
Universal, IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Sun Microsystems, Fidelity
Investments, Symbol Technologies and SHL Systemhouse. Dr. Karrer was
valedictorian at Loyola Marymount University, attended the University
of Southern California as a Tau Beta Pi fellow, one of the top 30
engineers in the nation, and received a M.S. and Ph.D. in Computer
Science. He is a frequent speaker at industry and academic events.